How to Build an Elephant Sized Fort | Charlotte family photographer

October 5, 2011

It’s got to be a super sized fort! charlotte family photographer

Believe it or not…super sized was my idea and, of course, when the kids heard that SUPER SIZED was my plan they went wild! A huge fort that took up our whole family room was like a dream come true. (There was a point during our building phase that I wondered, “What the heck was I thinking?!”) We’ve done lots of forts…over the dining room table, in the art room, over a couple of boxes…but never one you could stand up in….and then leave up in the house for over a month (that was pretty awesome!). charlotte family photographer

So…how did we build this mega thing? I’ll tell you. It’s easier than you think. (don’t let the 12 steps scare you, you can do this!)

Supplies: charlotte family photographer

Cotton string/twine

Push pins

Light weight sheets

Safety pins

Clamps (we didn’t use these but they would have been nice)

A big piece of furniture or two

Lots of blankets

Lots of pillows

Twinkle lights

A pennant banner (to use as a chandelier)

And being okay with putting push pin holes in your walls

Building time: 2 hours (a second adult is hugely helpful if you’re short like me…if you want to refrain from words your kids don’t want to hear…not that I speak from experience…)

Our steps to building a fort:

NOTE:Some good prep will save you time and your patience later. These first two steps are the prep that will help the rest of the fort go up more easily.

1. We started out with our big armoire that holds our T.V. by opening our armoire doors. This is our main piece that every other part of the fort is built from. (You don’t have to use an armoire but something tall, big, and heavy that’s not going to fall over is safest.)

2. Put something in front of the doors to hold them in place.

3. Tie cotton twine/string around the metal pointy part of the push pin and then push it into the top of the armoire door. Do this for each door. Using this starting point build a grid of cotton twine to create a square around the room. We attached corners of our cotton string grid to our stationary bike (wrapped string around the handles), the wall, and to the hinges of our back door. (It did pop off our door a few times during the month but I just reattached it: see below.)

4. Fasten a lightweight sheet to the top of the armoire with push pins going along the top of the armoire.

5. Safety pin the sheet to another sheet and (if you have a ceiling fan or lamp that can take it) attach the sheet to the fan or light fixture with clamps. I know this sounds crazy (make sure you set your fan so that it won’t turn on!) but we had our fort up and hanging from our fan for a month with no issues. (This is the way I did it and by no means should you do anything you’re not comfortable with, it’s your house, do what you feel is safest.)

6. From the fan we safety pinned more sheets together and brought them over the cotton twine grid that we built and push pinned the sheet into the wall above our window.

7. You’ve now created the foundation for your fort. Now you just need to add the walls. We attached sheets with safety pins to our foundation pieces and then draped the sheets over the long sides of the cotton string rectangle grid that we made.

8. Hang twinkle lights along the cotton twine, along your armoire, up to the middle of the fan, and all over the fort where they’ll hang well (lights add to the magic of your Super Fort.)

9. Hang a pennant banner from the fan (I just tucked it and used safety pins where needed) so that it’s covered up and it looks like you have an ultra magical chandelier (especially since the twinkle lights are interspersed).

10. Now add sheets where you think you need them to make walls and doors so that your fort feels more top secret-ish.

11. Bring all of the pillows and blankets you can find from around the house and fill your fort so that it feels nice and cushy.

12. Get a bunch of games and play them in your awesome fort. Eat dinner in there. Tell stories. Watch a movie. Do homework. Read a book out loud while everyone is nestled in blankets. Do everything in your fort. It makes all the little things feel like magic.

Have any questions? Let me know in the comments and I’ll be happy to help you!

Despite a couple of hiccups (and wondering how I could have taken on this crazy idea) the process of building with the kids, having them get so excited as it went up and was so huge, and then all the fun we had in it was worth it x1000! We’ve already been talking about building another one.

I want to see your fort!!

When you build your fort, please post a picture on Facebook and/or Instagram and tag me and do the hashtag: #familynessfort

8 Comments

Guess what? We built a fort on Family night. It was made with table cloths, rubber bands, packing tape, couch cushions etc….
we put skull lights and two electric glowing pumpkins in it.
we played Apples to Apples and read books.We kept it up for 4 days…..until I went crazy from the clutter. John and Adam slept in it every night and had friends over to play in it everyday after school.
Thanks for the fun idea.

[…] This can be a difficult pursuit, until you decide to do something different as a team. Inspired by a brilliant simple idea to build a fort up. Instead of crawling to enter, this ‘elephant’ fort of fellow photographer of real life and relationships Davina Fear made one with her family you can stand in! You can get instructions here: http://www.davinafear.com/…/how-to-build-an-elephant…/ […]

[…] This can be a difficult pursuit, until you decide to do something different as a team. Inspired by a brilliant simple idea to build a fort up. Instead of crawling to enter, this ‘elephant’ fort of fellow photographer of real life and relationships Davina Fear made one with her family you can stand in! You can get instructions here: http://www.davinafear.com/…/how-to-build-an-elephant…/ […]